No Direction Home
by Dim Aldebaran
Summary: What could drive Artemis to run away? – and what would he do? Sometimes, it is all you can do to run from the truth. [AH, dark]


N O

D I R E C T I O N

H O M E

- Dim Aldebaran -

**:i:**

Holly had a standing invitation to enter; but somehow knocking felt appropriate, given the circumstances.

She had received an email that morning from Butler to come immediately. She had been given no explanation, no reason why; only explicit instructions, and a prepaid ticket on the Tara shuttlebus. She was quite bewildered by it all, an emotion that made her stomach twist into Celtic knots when Artemis Fowl was involved.

Juliet answered the door. It was clear that she hadn't the time to put on make up that morning: her eyes only glittered with unshed tears.

The Tara shuttlebus had been quiet; few people came during the new moon. It made getting through security hell, however; they gave her aboveground pass a full forgery check. It _had_ been forged, granted, but by the centaur who had made the system. Her request to use a wingset had also been put under intense scrutiny: they all knew what happened to fairies that flew in the day. _Won't you lose your magic? _they had demanded, _will they make us go out in the day too? _In the end they had let her go: Holly's habit of fingering her Neutrino was very charismatic one.

Juliet started talking; Holly brought her mind from her memories and listened. "It's—it's Artemis—found him missing—gone—" Her voice broke, shattering.

The pieces cut as she realized the immensity of the problem, cut and made her mind bleed into emotions, hot, fevered, furious, rushing like a river of blood: she could only clasp on to reason while the emotional flood threatened to wash rationality away. She was angry; she was enraged; and perhaps most of all she was terrified.

She had dealt with kidnapping cases before: the first thing was to not let the family's emotion to involve her. Breathe deeply: _one-two-three_—Juliet was sobbing, ignore that—_four-five-six_—Artemis would not panic, be like Artemis—_seven-eight-nine—_Butler was there, Butler will help—

"Juliet, where's Butler?"

Juliet sniffled, there were tears in her eyes, like a storm in a drought, thunder but no rain. "Dom's going through the grounds. He told me—he told me to show you his room and see if there's anything he missed."

Holly took a deep breath, clutching at her sense of calm. "Is there any evidence?—any suspects?"

Juliet took a shuddering breath . "I—I don't understand it. There were no signs of struggle—nothing at all, the _bed_ was even made—they didn't take anything, they didn't take the Stradivarius or _anything_—the security vids were all wiped—Dom was drugged—"

"Sit down and close your eyes."

"Wh—"

"I think you're drugged as well," she stated simply.

Juliet slid down, back against a wall: she was too emotionally charged to do anything but obey.

Holly put her hands on her temple, concentrating. She had little medical expertise; she was no more experienced than the day she 'cured' Angeline's madness. Fortunately, detecting poison was a simple matter – send sparks into the system as you would when determining what to heal, but then recall them. The sparks would retain some of the characteristics of that body: from there, detecting foreign substances was a matter of instinct.

She forced herself to relax, and sent a stream of magic into Juliet's body. Compared to fairies, she felt dull, lifeless, soulless. It felt like examining a doll to see whether it had contracted dysentery.

Holly withdrew her sparks; feeling them wash over her was like using dirty bathwater. "You need to purge your bloodstream somehow," she said, bringing her hands back from Juliet's forehead. "It's some sort of psychoactive drug. I think it's an opiate, but I'm not sure."

Juliet's eyes remained closed; her fists curled at her sides. "Of course," she whispered angrily, "I never react this way, I should have known—"

"It's alright," Holly said reassuringly, standing up. "You were just worried about Artemis. And even if you don't purge it now, it'll flush out in a few hours by itself."

Juliet looked up; her eyes were shattered, like broken porcelain. "They haven't kidnapped him for a ransom."

Holly looked down at the floor. "I know," she said quietly, "but we can hope."

She didn't need directions to Artemis' room; she had been there before. Since the heyday of their adventures they had remained in close contact; mostly email, but also the occasional visitation on surface when Foaly could sneak her past the LEPsecurity. She smiled—last time, after playing some of his own compositions, he had taught her to play _Song of India_ on the piano—

Artemis' room; she blinked. As ever, the door seemed to suggest that it had cost more than her education. The rest of the room—it was as it was. Artemis. Minimalist logic and Victorian pride.

She closed her eyes. _Artemis. _Saying the word before—before, what had it been? Amusement at his socially naïve antics; a calm knowing that he could stand by her side if adventure returned to their lives; pride in his new sense of conscience; the awe at his sheer intelligence that had not disappeared over the course of their friendship.

_Artemis_. Now—now, she could scarce remember how she had thought about him before. Now there was fear for his already dwindling innocence, panic at the thought of the fairy race exposed, but most of all, terror for his very _life_—

_Artemis—_she stilled a shuddering sob and tried to think.

She walked to the far wall, to the bed. It was twin-sized, and though the woodwork was ornate the bedding was simple, consisting of a navy duvet and ivory sheets. A few throw pillows, navy but with elaborate gold embroidery, gave it an aesthetic touch.

She frowned; Juliet had noted that the bed was still made. The sheets had been tucked with precision, the throw pillows arranged thoughtfully: not at all the job of kidnappers in a hurry. Either the kidnapping had taken place early in the evening, or Artemis had been up late.

—_did they come from behind, did they put a knife under his throat and tell him not to scream—?_

Holly closed her eyes. Such thoughts were not speculation; they were panic. Panic had no place in the analytic mind.

She opened her eyes.

Turning her attention to the rest of the room, she noted that, true to Juliet's statement, there were no signs of struggle. If the mêlée had been violent, the kidnappers had also managed to put every object back into its proper orientation, besides making the bed to a hotel standard.

Holly kneaded her forehead, struggling to think. He had had no particularly antagonistic plans of late, other than to compose some music for his Stradivarius—which he had legally acquired. He had even played some of his compositions for her; humoresques, adagios, vivaces, and on her especial request a hornpipe.

She remembered his expression when she called for a hornpipe, something between horror and indignation. It was a loose, spontaneous form, so unlike the constrained structure he preferred. His disgust had worn off while he played, and he even condescended to smile a bit. _It does him good_, she had thought, _it makes him young_—

She was now certain no more insight could be gained from the room itself. She already knew that Artemis had no security cameras in the room: his intense desire for privacy had overridden Butler's better judgment. He wasn't the sort to play with fire, anymore, and he consequently thought himself invulnerable to all the bonfires he had set in earlier years.

She sighed, leaning against a wall. It seemed that genius's greatest ability was forgetting to use itself. He had been so set on reducing the Manor's security, he and his father, of turning over not just a new leaf but a whole damn tree. What was wrong with the old tree? It just needed to be pruned a bit, maybe add some shrubbery around the base, but it was like the tree you loved to climb as a child, something that just grows on you…

And now: forest fire.

She shook her head. She had to think: if she didn't, Artemis would die. That simple.

What would the kidnappers leave behind? Nothing of themselves—nothing reasonably detectable, nothing short of skin cells in the air. Something of their means, perhaps?—no, not even a car tread, the best were too good for that, and only the best could infiltrate Fowl Manor.

But Artemis must have known something of this, he was Artemis Fowl—

He would have gone quietly, she realized; bound and gagged, but walked out with a entourage of men in black, carrying him out would have been near impossible to do quickly enough... He would have left something, some message, breadcrumbs.

Her mind spun. Securing him would be the first thing they'd do—binding and gagging, to prevent those very breadcrumbs. If bound properly, the hands were rendered completely paralyzed; voice recognition software was unlikely to function with a gag, which would probably be soaked in a mild sedative to keep him passive anyway. That left his feet.

She looked down at the carpeting. It would be something discreet—but something also suitably articulate. The thought struck her quite suddenly: Morse Code. He could alternately march or drag his feet to change the default direction of the carpet fibers, creating a dash-dot pattern. It would be taken as nothing by the kidnappers, mere nervousness on the victim's part.

She looked down at the carpeting; a change in fiber direction would be subtle, and mixed up with the footsteps of everyone since the last vacuuming. She checked every room along all possible exit routes, even checking the wooden floors for a corresponding set of rubber marks from the sole of the shoe.

After a time she despaired; either Artemis has been completely sedated, or the marks had been too faint and had disappeared entirely after the flurry of traffic after his disappearance.

_Frond—_what now? What was there to lead her to the kidnappers? Butler had not yet returned from his search of the grounds, and Juliet seemed intent on smothering her misery by cooking. Holly was presented with French Toast at ten; she declined, though she accepted the Darjeeling.

"He always liked Darjeeling," Juliet said morosely as she left, as if he was already dead. The opiate needed time yet to flush from her system; in her heightened emotional state, Juliet was useless, only capable of contemplating her own failure as a Butler and as a friend.

Holly was left imagining him—his skin no paler in death, dark blue eyes now glazed, pianist hands limp and musicless at his sides, black hair hanging over his face like a shroud, lips apart as if to say a final word—

She took her tea at Artemis' desk; she had a view of the rest of the room from there. She traced possible entry routes as she sipped—through Butler's room (unlikely), through the window, through the hallway. All were equally hostile to her, all sinning grievously against her in withholding even the subtlest hint: fingerprints smeared into Arabic on the headboard; the fine white dust of dried tears, wept into Braille…

The tea was cold by the time she finished it; she set it on the desk and thought about setting her head there too, giving up and weeping like Juliet, since _there was_ _nothing she could do_—

Setting down the cup triggered the computer; it was turned on, flashing through its start up screens. Holly started, then watched: it hurt to think so, but Artemis could have been up to his old tricks without even telling the Butlers. She knew he had a diary; he had mentioned it to her once, how he was using it to keep an account for future discourse on the subject of genii. She had considered it arrogant, and told him so; he laughed, and told her that she could keep one for future discourse on the subject of fools.

She smiled wryly at the memory. He had never apologized, even when she had threatened him with another bloody nose.

She had eventually learned to recognize his moods through his very attempts to disguise them; he had been hurt by her comment, since he had a very genuine interest in helping future psychological research with those journals. His instinct was to lash out against those who had hurt him; in her case, with an insult. He was a surprisingly moody person beneath his usual demeanor; his emotions were like riptides beneath a calm surf.

Holly turned the thought to a productive thread: What had been his mood last time? He played music; constrained, classical music, music for the mind and not the soul. Everything had flowed, but it had flowed like from a pitcher to a cup, to a preordained form. There had been nothing natural to it: it was not pouring lifegiving water into the earth where it could ever be absorbed and returned as rain again and again. His disregard of music in the latter type typified him, really: but it had been deeper that day, deeper and more artificial than being Artemis Fowl really required.

He had been troubled that day, then: foreshadowed by the kidnapping to come? She couldn't imagine why he wouldn't tell her, let alone the Butlers—but then, that was what the diary would tell her.

She arrived at the password page. In all likelihood, she'd have one shot at this; choose carefully, then. Words ran through her head—favorite philosophers, scientists, relatives; scientific playthings that had attracted his interest, fermions and bosons, mRNA, the field equations, M theory; sums of the numbers of his birthday, the current date, the day the _Fowl Star_ sank, the day his father returned.

The mind of Artemis Fowl dwelled on anything and everything: what had it dwelled on of late?

_Lollipops_, she decided, half hoping, half despairing. Lollipops for the exposure he allowed around her, the exclusive view he had offered into his life; lollipops for the good little boy he had been and the trouble it got him in to; lollipops for childhood, when hornpipes are the anthem and classical music is but a far-off foe called adulthood.

It didn't take long; the computer whirred a bit and brought her to the desktop. She could not help but stare—_lollipops_? She hadn't really thought it would work—it would be just a name, just a game, something so she could feel that she had done everything possible.

Still flabbergasted, she quickly searched for his diary folder. Upon finding it, she opened the folder: the contents were arranged by date. The entries stretched back to the heyday of their adventures; opening one, she was presented with an Artemis restored to his criminal self, and she closed it, heart already aching for the past.

Holly decided to try a week ago, when she had visited:

"_My compositions have run awry: Holly insisted on one of those silly hornpipes. _

_It was not the hornpipe itself that was difficult; being nothing more than a series of sequential notes played rapidly, it was not difficult to create something of sufficient lyricality that a musical illiterate like Holly would find pleasing. I played it, and she seemed to enjoy the performance almost as much I detested it. I would title it, but I'm afraid it would reflect my attitude towards the piece too closely for publishing standards._

_My compositions after her departure, however, were of similar quality. The notes would not be restrained by the structure I ordained: everything sounds like _Le Conservatorie_. Debussy would find this adagio dreamy, I am sure, but it is a particularly ineffective étude by Mozart's standards. I would say that I do not understand why I am doing this, but I do."_

She blinked. The entry ended there, a finale as blunt as a word. Disturbed, she found an entry for the next day:

"_It is ridiculous! I am reduced to hornpipes. My Strad lies there untuned, for I have made no proper compositions. Every adagio, every vivace, every nocturne, they are all united in quarantine by this chaotic ineptitude that has so infected me. I would curse Holly, if only I knew how to make such words come."_

The next:

"_I debased myself to playing a reverie; it reeks of French sentimentalism. Schubert forgive me, but I enjoyed it—I **enjoyed** those melodramatic dynamics, I **enjoyed **those lurching tempos! There is no structure, no order—how can I enjoy such a thing? I am wunderkind, I am Artemis Fowl..._

_These are disturbing thoughts. I had best return to my Mozart before I begin to ponder the likes of Unamuno."_

She frowned; she couldn't see how a hornpipe could influence him to the point of writer's block. Then again, her compositions were limited to the shower.

What was perhaps most strange was that they related nothing more disturbing than self-frustration, none of the dark, seedy business she had expected. None of this seemed related to a kidnapped; had he been truly oblivious, then? It was comforting, to think him truthful, though she would almost prefer some hidden criminality to be revealed, since then she might have an idea of who had taken him.

"_Mother and Father had friends for dinner; I was requested to play. They had little enough class to request Rimsky-Korsakoff's idiotic buzzing; as if chromatic scales frighten me. After _Flight_, I played parts of Mozart's third, which appeared to amuse me more than them. Savages. In any case, I then played one of those damnable pieces of late—the reverie. Mother found my reverie 'charming'; she asked me who I had written it for. I told her no one, and she seemed to scoff and go away… I do not understand her, sometimes. I am not sure whether it is because she is female, or whether it is because she is older. Perhaps both; they each have the qualities of dementias, at times._

_I do not understand it, though… does artistic genius require inspiration? My 'lost Mozart' was written when inspiration was the rustle of euros! Most people think it to require emotional stimulus to compose. She is no muse, I can assure myself, since her presence seems to be developing a counterproductive influence, rather than an outflow of sentimental garbage. This is fortunate, as fate would have it, since such a relationship would be an inconvenience to both me and to Butler, who would have to deal with those irritating 'leprechauns' all over again." _

Her eye caught the date for this one; last night, the night of the kidnapping. They had no leads; the kidnapping had been perfect, too perfect—it was her last chance, her last chance to save his life—

"_I have found myself writing the sentimental tripe yet again! It feels like a symptom to some fantastic disease, something in the annals of science fiction cliché. I am sure many would love to have such a crippling disability as this, but I would much rather be cured._

_A thought has been forming in my mind for some months now: only now has it developed form enough for words. Why at all? As I look through the diaries of the past weeks and months I find a curious foreshadowing, so obvious it would almost seem conceived if not for my oblivion to it. I am not sure why I am so unaware, only that—_

_God. Is this it? Is this—it is impossibility, it is chaos! It is so terrible, so human, I would wish that I were blessed with abhorrence rather than this strange ambivalence towards it all—_

_It is strange, my mind revolts and my emotions… they do nothing. Has the left hand been toiling at manuscripts while the right throws them away? Ah, which way does it go—? Does my mind create music only to be spoiled by the soul, or is it the music of the soul, foiled by the contrivances of my own mind?_

_This—this has been here for so long, it cannot be uprooted. She would not understand if I told her. I have to leave, and if I return I shall know my true character: am I selfless enough to spare her a life of trouble, am I brave enough to face this alone—_

_Alas! I am at my knees before the guillotine: let them have cake! cried the queen, and the guillotine fell upon her; will it fall upon me?"_

She rose unsteadily, clutching at the desk; the words were putting out her eyes, now, blinding her—

She staggered to the window, falling against it heavily. The window was cold against her cheeks. She could see him, Butler, crossing the grounds, face red with foreign tears—there was a body in his hands, pale hands limp as they swung with his step, back and forth, to and fro. Butler fell to his knees as Juliet ran out across the grass, her long braid flashing like the gold whip of Lucifer, and she kneeled and clutched at those pale pianist hands… Frond, she could hear the anguished cries through the glass, sharp and keening like the blade across the wrist—

Her tears scalded the glass.

**:i:**

Er... thoughts? Concrit, please... this is a far cry from my usual writing. This has been beta'd by the wonderful Whilily, and looked at by Kitty Rainbow and Stradivari.

I'm doing this as part of the 30angsts challenge for theprompt of "hide and seek". I'm also using this for af100's prompt of "outsides". I also have a link to these on my bio, if anyone cares.

The title is from the song "Like a Rolling Stone". If there's any other Bob Dylan nuts out there, see if you can find the embedded lyrics.

Also... the Orion Awards for AF fanfictionare starting to get into gear. Follow the links on my bio and help out! We need people to nominate their favorite fics for them so we can have a large variety of nominees. The categories range from "Best OC" to "Most Memorable Line", so pitch in!


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